


Catharsis

by YamiSnuffles



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Pavelyan - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-02
Updated: 2019-06-02
Packaged: 2020-04-06 08:09:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19058668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YamiSnuffles/pseuds/YamiSnuffles
Summary: Lucien Trevelyan is there to comfort Dorian after his final conversation with his father. Inspired by Gaider's story, "The Final Conversation."





	Catharsis

**A link to David Gaider's "The Final Conversation" found[here](https://medium.com/@davidgaider/the-final-conversation-d6258fa6cbdb).**

* * *

 

Lucien flexed his newly made arm. It was strange not having the anchor there, after so long, stranger still having an arm half made of metal and magic. He’d have to thank Dagna again for her exceptional- and exceptionally fast- work. Get her something to really show how much it meant to him beyond the astonished, stammered words he’d offered. Maybe something that both she and Sera would enjoy? Bees. Mechanical bees. Mechanical, magical bees. He’d seen some clever metal creations in Orlais. He could commission something there. Then it wouldn’t be much of a trick to enliven their delicate joints with a spell or two.

He waved the thought off. None of this was why he was there, pacing about a concealed meeting spot on the border of Tevinter. He was only trying to distract himself from the reality of it.

Somewhere out in the dark, moonless night was Dorian. Lucien had no real idea what the man he loved was up to. They had become far better at open communication over the years, despite a few glaring exceptions- the fact that Halward had died and Dorian was leaving on the one hand, and, well, Lucien’s hand on the other. But Dorian had barely said a word. Only that, while he still needed to return to Tevinter on his own, there was one final thing he needed to do first and he wanted Lucien close by for it. Close, but still not in Tevinter.

It was frustrating. He knew Dorian well enough to know the cause of such silence. Nothing got the man to close in on himself, to shrink away from his effusive brilliance, like Halward Pavus. And nothing made Lucien want to be there for Dorian more than the now deceased Magister. But he respected Dorian’s wishes and so waited. If he made a ravine out of the whole of Tevinter’s border in the meantime from his pacing, well, he could hardly be blamed for it, could he?

Then, a sign. The green focusing crystal in his mechanical hand glowed faintly. Lucien had set sigils around his camp, there to give him warning should anyone cross them. They weren’t wards and so gave off little energy. Very few would notice the prickle in the air, at least not until Lucien had readied a warm reception for anyone who hoped to come upon him unprepared. After days of anxious waiting, it was enough to put the hairs on the back of Lucien’s neck on end.

“I still think that crystal is in poor taste,” came Dorian’s familiar, velvety voice. “No wonder Sera is so fond of that arcanist of yours. Giving you a replacement anchor, after the last one cost you your arm and nearly your life? Positively ghoulish. Although, don’t think I missed your delight upon seeing it, amatus.”

The crystal in Lucien’s hand glowed bright with gathered mana, a replacement for the staff he no longer carried. Upon hearing Dorian’s amusement tinged voice, the light was banished in an instant. Lucien rushed into the nearly pitch black of the night and fell upon Dorian.

“You’re back.” He retreated half a step but kept his hands on either of Dorian’s shoulders. “Are you alright?”

“You say that gives you more anonymity than a staff but then what do you do? Run around with a beacon that all but screams, ‘I’m the Inquisitor! Come kill me.’ Truly, amatus, you are the most vexing man imaginable sometimes.”

Ah. Dorian hadn’t answered Lucien’s question in the slightest which provided all the answer he needed. Lucien flicked his wrist and conjured up a ball of soft white flame. He tossed it into the air and let it hang between them, a sharp contrast to the gloom and tension it joined in that space.

Dorian’s proud shoulders hung low and tired. His face was drawn, his eyes red. Whatever he returned to his home to do had taken its toll. “Do you want to talk about it?”

That, puzzlingly, made Dorian laugh, dry and harsh. “Oh no. I’ve had quite enough talking for one lifetime.”

“Perish the thought.”

Dorian gave a warmer laugh and slipped out of Lucien’s grip to sit on a wide, flat rock. “You’re right. Maker forbid I deprive Thedas so. But for the time being, can we just sit?”

“Anything you need.”

Lucien sat next to Dorian. When the other man all but collapsed into him, he wrapped him with comforting arms- one flesh and one metal but both ready to do anything to protect Dorian from harm, though he knew Dorian didn’t need protecting. But protect he would, at least in so far as he could block out the harshness and pain of the world with a desperately tight embrace.

Dorian’s shoulders heaved and Lucien could feel the warm moisture of tears collecting on his neck. The pointed cruelty of Tevinter had taught Dorian to silence his worst grief but he could never hide it. Whether or not the passions of the rest of his countrymen burned so bright and cut so deep, Dorian had too much in him to secret it away. He might have, as he often joked, been a work of art but it was one too often painted in shades heartbreakingly dark. He didn’t need to give voice to his pain for Lucien to see it.

So they sat like that for some time, an elegant statue of despair, the only point of light in a landscape otherwise devoid of it. Dorian emptied his grief as best he could and Lucien clung to Dorian like the world depended on it. In so many ways, his did.

Tremors steadied to trembling, steadied to stillness. Lucien continued to cling until he sensed that Dorian needed a bit of space. Lucien released him and scooted back a breath. His right hand remained and their fingers twined naturally together.

Dorian turned away, turned north toward his home. “I hate him. Why couldn’t he just leave me with that?”

There was no need to ask of whom he spoke. There was only one ‘him’ that was spoken of in the same way that Dorian spoke of Tevinter, in tones that said he loved and loathed in equal measure. Halward Pavus was often both the hero and villain of his son’s tale, sometimes at different points and sometimes the same. It was why Dorian could never seem to make a clean exit.

Lucien reached up and cupped Dorian’s face so that he could turn it to him. Rather than flinch from the cold metal, Dorian leaned into it. Lucien’s thumb brushed away a falling tear. The movement was more clumsy than it once had been, when the digit had been enlivened by flesh rather than magic, but Dorian only turned slightly to kiss it like a prayer.

Maker did Lucien love him.

When he could trust his voice not to crack under the sudden surge of emotion, he asked, “Did your father leave you some final message?”

Dorian’s laugh that time was so loud and sharp that it startled a few sleeping birds from their roosts. “Something like that.” When Lucien raised his brow, Dorian only waved him off. “Tevinter.”

Shorthand for something absurd or ghoulish or arcane or all of the above. Lucien nodded, still puzzled but aware that meant the wound was too fresh to pick at. “Is there anything I can do?”

“Tell me I’m mad for so much as thinking about taking up my father’s seat, much less fully intending it. That I shouldn’t return to a land that wants me dead, a people who think I’m wrong just for existing, and a home that doesn’t have you in it.”

Lucien’s mouth took a wry quirk upward in a way that always made his mustache twitch up with it. “I’m fairly sure I’ve said all of that to you before. Maybe even in those exact words.”

Dorian sighed. He closed his eyes for a moment and let his head rest in Lucien’s hand. When he opened his eyes again they were a bit over bright but dry. “So why is it I haven’t changed my mind?”

“Because you are mad?” Lucien chuckled. “Or, more likely, because you are principled and you won’t let anything so silly as reason get in the way of doing what you think is right. Because you’re strong. Because you’re brave.”

The final word made Dorian’s face contort in a way that half convinced Lucien he’d somehow said the wrong thing for as broken and lost as it made the other man look. But when he shook Lucien’s hands off, it was only to wrap them in his own. “You know, I rather hate you, as well.”

And, unlike when he said that of his father or of his homeland, that only meant one thing. Lucien’s smile widened. “I love you, too, Dorian.”


End file.
